


Small Worlds (and Little People)

by Fionn_Sgeul



Series: Midnight Garden [6]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, BAMF Gwen Cooper, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Gwen Cooper and Gwyneth the Maid are the same person, Gwen is older and wiser and may have gone slightly off her rocker at some point, Gwen isn't human, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24987382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionn_Sgeul/pseuds/Fionn_Sgeul
Summary: Faeries are, by nature, deeply, fiercely territorial. There are few things in this world as guaranteed to piss them off as other faeries mucking about on their turf.And Torchwood, Gwen has realised, is Her Turf.Which means these little twig-fingered child-stealers can kindly Get Lost and Never Come Back.
Series: Midnight Garden [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/491872
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is actually something I wrote four or five years ago. I never posted it because I lost interest in the series, but now that the wonderful Sholio has rekindled my interest in it, I've gone back into my archives and dusted off the next few instalments. : )
> 
> I've come a long way as a writer since I wrote this, and I've also changed my approach to faeries a fair bit, bringing them closer to the old Gaelic legends they come from. But I think this stuff is still good enough to be worth sharing, and I hope you enjoy it. : )

Jack woke from his dream with a gasp. He sat up and buried his face in his knees. It had been a long time since he'd had that nightmare, though he'd half-expected it to return three months ago, when Gwen had burst into his life. She had briefly re-awoken all his fears of faeries. He'd felt helpless, powerless to protect his team should Gwen turn nasty.

But she hadn't, and Jack had soon come to see her in a completely different light. He'd seen the good in her, and he'd offered her a place on his team. He'd known that he was essentially trying to put a wrecking ball on a leash, that his influence over Gwen was always going to be limited. And this point had soon been driven home when she had gone vigilante with Owen and hunted down the murderer Ed Morgan, and then again when she'd lost her temper and reduced a UNIT warehouse to a crater in the ground.

But since then, his view of her had changed further. He saw her now as very like the Doctor. They were both forces of nature, wild and uncontrollable. They were kind, clever, and able to work miracles — the only two people that Jack had true faith in, whom he knew would somehow find a solution to any problem. They were playful and mad, old and wise, and unleashed the powers of the gods when crossed.

Jack couldn't help but compare the UNIT warehouse with the sonic weapons factory in Villengard. He was pretty sure Gwen would plant an orchard in the ruins if he suggested it to her.

So Jack had started to think that faeries weren't so bad, not if they could produce someone like Gwen. And maybe the People of Peace weren't. But the Little People, the ones who stole children and killed with rose petals … he didn't think he could ever reconcile himself to them.

He tried to put the dream out of his mind, but then he came out of his bunker to be greeted by Ianto with reports of strange weather patterns and a rose petal on his desk.

Shit.

"Get Gwen in here."

***

Gwen took one look at the weather readings and went very still. "Little People," she murmured. And when Jack silently showed her the rose petal, her eyes went dark and stormy.

"You said you'd met them before, when they killed your men," she said quietly, still staring at the petal. "But you survived. Could that be why they're interested in you?"

"In a way, I think it is, yeah," he said. The Little People hadn't even tried to kill him that day, which could only mean that they had known about his immortality. So, in a way, his survival probably was what interested them.

"Hmph," said Gwen, glaring at the petal.

She then proceeded to fly into full-on Territorial Mode. She went all around the Hub with a permanent marker, a chisel, and a hammer, adding a bunch more symbols and Ogham runes. Her manner was tense, her faerie nature sitting closer to the surface, a hint of unnatural light in her eyes and a chill in the air around her. The rest of the team didn't know what was going on, so they were puzzled by her mood and picked their way around her cautiously. Jack didn't explain.

It was with trepidation that he asked Gwen to accompany him to Estelle's presentation.

"She studies faeries?" asked Gwen in a low voice, staring narrow-eyed at the poster outside the auditorium.

Jack shot her an edgy look. "She doesn't mean any harm. Estelle … she dreams of magic. She's so full of wonder for the world."

Gwen cocked a hard look at him. "That's as may be. But we don't like people sticking their noses in. Do it to one of my people, and you can expect pranks and scare tactics. Do it to the Little People, and they might bloody kill you."

"I know," said Jack.

They slipped into the auditorium and listened to Estelle's starry-eyed view of faeries.

"She's never actually met us, has she?" Gwen whispered to Jack.

"No. And I'd prefer to keep it that way — well, excepting you."

Estelle went to the next picture in her slideshow.

"Sweet Mother Nature," murmured Gwen. "She took _photos_ of them."

"That's bad?" said Jack, leaning in close with his innards going tight.

"It is if they noticed her doing it. And if those pictures were taken with flash, I don't see how they could have missed it."

Jack studied the photo on display with a sinking feeling. "Looks like they were taken with flash to me." He looked at Estelle — sweet, innocent, loving Estelle. "Is there anything you can do to keep her safe?"

Gwen looked at him. "She means a lot to you?"

Jack hesitated, but if admitting to it got Estelle protection… "Yes. A lot."

Gwen stared at him for a few moments more before looking back to Estelle. "I could put up warnings around her house — 'Hands off, under the protection of the Blackhazels,' that sort of thing."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Blackhazels?"

"My … clan, if you like. I'm generally known to other faeries as Gwen Blackhazel. Though that isn't my True Name."

"Ah." Jack rubbed a hand over his face. "Would the warnings stop them?"

"Certainly make them think twice. We leave each other's Protected and Chosen Ones alone. I can't guarantee you that she'd be safe — depends how badly she's offended them."

"Do it," said Jack. "Please."

Gwen considered him again. "You got it."

***

After the presentation, Jack went up and greeted Estelle with a warm hug. Gwen could see from how they looked at one another that they were dear to each other. Interesting. Jack usually went to such trouble to shroud himself in mystery, but here was someone who'd managed to get close.

"Estelle, I'd like you to meet Gwen, a colleague of mine."

Gwen smiled and shook the hand of the woman who dreamed of faeries. Who thought they were shy, friendly, loving creatures. Gwen wondered if she'd never looked at a legend older than the saccharine Victorian times. That was when people had somehow got the idea that faeries were cutesy, friendly, if mischievous little things with butterfly wings. Maybe it was because mortals had stopped believing in them … stopped being afraid of them.

Foolish.

Jack went through all of Estelle's pictures, asking her where she'd taken them and when.

"Couple of nights ago, in Roundstone Wood."

"Roundstone Wood?" said Gwen sharply. Sweet Mother Nature, _this woman_.

"You know it?" asked Jack.

"It's not a place I'd advise going alone. At night. With a camera." Or _at all_. She shot Jack a look that she hoped conveyed 'Holy _hell_ , that was dangerous.' Jack's expression went grim.

"Oh, I was perfectly fine," said Estelle, smiling. "They wouldn't hurt me." She beamed at Jack, entirely missing the incredulous expression Gwen was directing at her. "Oh, Jack, if only you could have seen them there in the wood! They were _happy_ , they were dancing, the faerie lights were shining…"

Estelle's eyes were shining too, shining with wonder. Gwen saw what Jack meant. Estelle not only didn't mean any harm, she didn't even mean to stick her nose in. She just wanted to see them, to sit and watch them and share in their joy. Gwen felt a stab of kindness for this old woman who'd somehow lived a long life without losing the child's innocence and wonder.

"They're dangerous," Jack insisted gently.

"Oh, Jack," said Estelle. Then, to Gwen, "Jack and I have always disagreed about faeries. I only ever see the good ones. He only ever sees the bad."

Gwen smiled at her. "Well, I suppose one person's good could be someone else's evil."

"That's what his father used to say," said Estelle with a sad, reminiscent smile. Gwen looked up with interest. Jack's father?

"Actually," said Jack slowly, "I have met a couple of good ones now." His eyes darted to Gwen, who smiled. Estelle perked up, mouth open to speak, but Jack pointed at her before she could. "But they're still dangerous, even the good ones. They don't like people investigating them. What if they took offence to you taking pictures?"

Estelle waved away his concerns in favour of something much more interesting. "You've met them? When? Where?"

"Not these ones," he said with a nod to the blurry photo of what looked like a glowing butterfly — really, did the Little People _have_ to go propagating that ridiculous Victorian image? "There's more than one kind of faerie, you know."

"Yes, I have heard that," said Estelle. "These are the only sort that I've ever seen, though. But you've met others?" She was alight with interest.

"A couple." He looked at Gwen again, this time with a question in his eyes.

…What the hell, she thought. If she was going to convince this woman to leave the Little People the hell alone, her words would carry more weight coming from a real faerie.

"He means me," she said, and smiled her knife-edge smile. "Me and a friend of mine." And then, to head off any disbelief at the pass, she lit up her eyes and stirred up a breeze.

Estelle's eyes went wide and she took half a step back. Gwen tamped herself down for fear of frightening the old woman. "Jack and I found ourselves working at a common purpose, and he offered me a place on his team," she said mildly. "I'm quite enjoying it, though I suspect if anyone else treated working hours as casually as I do, they'd have been fired."

"If anyone else disappeared as much or played as many tricks as you do, I'd more than fire them," said Jack dryly. "But I knew what I was getting into when I hired you."

Estelle had recovered from her shock and was now approaching Gwen. "Are you really?" she asked breathlessly. "I've heard stories, of course — mostly Irish stories — about full-sized faeries. I dreamed of meeting one…" She rounded on Jack. "You had a faerie on your team and you never told me?"

"I haven't been here long," said Gwen. "And anyway, he wouldn't have told anyone without my approval. You should know how secretive faeries are."

"Yes," murmured Estelle, turning back to Gwen. Then she beamed. "Oh my, it's such an honour to meet you! Would you like to come back to my place for tea?" She looked from one of them to the other. "Oh, please do!"

Jack raised an eyebrow at Gwen, who cocked her head, hummed, and then nodded. It would be an excellent opportunity to put up the warnings around Estelle's house.

"We'd love to," he said.

***

They walked to Estelle's house, which wasn't far, and Estelle peppered Gwen with questions all the way there. Jack watched cautiously for any sign of Gwen's temper fraying, but she seemed it have taken to Estelle and was regarding her with patient indulgence. Gwen was sometimes evasive or vague with her answers, but she did answer. She was a lot more forthcoming about the Little People than her own.

As soon as they were through her front door, Estelle set about plying them with tea and biscuits. Once they were supplied, she went to put her handsome, fluffy, black and white cat outside. Jack watched Gwen turn her attention to the pictures on the mantel. She picked up a faded portrait of Jack from the war, wearing his RAF captain's uniform. She stared at it intently, then turned it so he could see.

"This is you."

Jack took it from her to take a proper look. "Sorry, no, that's my dad." He gave it a sad smile and went to replace it on the mantel. "He and Estelle were quite an item once upon a time. They were inseparable." He shot a look at Gwen. She was regarding him with a raised eyebrow and a sceptical tilt to her mouth.

"So why did they part?" she asked.

Jack plucked up another photo from the mantel and handed it to her. It was of the two of them sitting together on a bench at the seaside, back when Estelle's hair had been long and dark, her skin smooth, her face so very beautiful. "It was wartime; he was posted abroad, she volunteered to work on the land." He shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't still tear at him. "It just happened that way."

Gwen studied the picture he'd given her, glancing up at him. Her gaze was intense. Jack remembered when he and the team had discovered Gwen was much older than she ought to be by finding pictures of her from years long past. Was he about to be outed the same way? Well, if anyone would understand…

He was going through files of pictures when Gwen slipped out into the garden after Estelle. Jack's feeling that he was about to be found out intensified. He waited a minute before going to the back door. Gwen and Estelle were standing in Estelle's beautiful garden, talking. When they saw him, they came back to the house. And as Gwen passed, she murmured, "You and I are having a little talk later."

Yup. Busted.

They sat and chatted and drank tea and ate biscuits. Gwen talked Estelle into letting her mark the house and property with some 'protective charms' — not a hard sell, honestly — and then Jack and Estelle stood together and watched her as she worked. She pulled out a big permanent marker and picked up a couple of stones from the garden. On one, she wrote some Ogham runes, and on the other, she drew a tree. She repeated the runes on each corner of the house and on the gate fencing off the back garden.

"What do they say?" asked Estelle.

Gwen glanced up. "This one is my name in Welsh, and that one says 'Protected.' Would you mind if I burned a symbol into your outer doors? I can make it decorative."

"Go right ahead!" said Estelle. Jack smiled to himself at how happy she was. This was a dream come true for her.

Gwen burned a pretty and elegant tree into the door using only her fingers. Smoke rose from the wood under her touch. Estelle was fascinated.

"Is that Yggdrasil — the World Tree?" she asked.

"Hmm?" said Gwen. "Oh, no. This is the symbol of my clan, the Blackhazels — Cyll Du in Welsh. Any Blackhazel who sees this will know to look out for you, and any other faerie will know that interfering with you will lead to — ah, let's call it consequences."

Jack wondered if that translated to vicious and horrific death. He hoped so and hoped not at the same time.

Gwen put the same symbol on the front door, and she really did make them decorative — all sweeping branches and delicate leaves. They talked while she worked, and when she finally finished and stood back with satisfaction, she and Jack took their leave. Estelle begged them to come back, and Gwen surprised Jack by agreeing. Then she watched as Jack hugged Estelle in farewell and kissed the top of her head.

As they walked away, Gwen said softly, "I can see why you fell in love with her."

Jack paused midstride, then continued like nothing had happened. Gwen watched him knowingly. "Come on, Jack. You know what I am. I can tell the difference between a family resemblance and the same man in a different era. And I've wondered about you before. You're … different, somehow."

Jack sighed and looked up at the trees. Then he chuckled and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Figured you'd see through me sooner or later."

"So what are you? You _seem_ human."

"I am, far as I can tell." He rubbed his hand down over his face, wondering how much to tell her. "Something happened to me, a long time ago. I don't know what, and I don't know how. But ever since then, I can't die. Not from anything. I barely even age." It crossed his mind — as it had half a dozen times before — that Gwen was the most likely person he'd met since that day to have some idea of what had happened.

Gwen was quiet for a bit. Jack studied the houses they were passing as he waited for her to respond. "So how old are you?" she asked finally.

"A hundred and seventy-five. Which makes you…" he squinted as he did the maths in his head, "…a hundred and forty … one years older than me?"

"Sounds about right." She was looking at him like she'd never seen him before. "Explains a lot, really. Except why you smell funny."

Jack missed a step. "Excuse me, I do _not_ smell funny."

"Do too." She grinned. "Your smell is like the nasal version of a seductive swagger."

Jack laughed. "Fifty-first-century pheromones. People here have no idea."

"Fifty-first century…" murmured Gwen. She was giving him her intent, trying-to-figure-you-out stare again. "You travelled with the Doctor. Is that when you're from?"

"Yep. The human race has moved on a bit by then."

"How did you come to be here, then? Or, well, now?"

Jack hesitated before answering that one. "That's a long story."

"I have time."

Jack looked at her sideways, considering. Well, it was the same story as the immortality thing, which he really did want to run by her, so why not? He sighed. "It all started when the Doctor, Rose, and I were kidnapped into the reality TV shows from hell…"

"They're all from hell."

"…Granted."

***

Gwen, it turned out, had never come across anything like Jack before — no surprises there. She had no immediate solutions to offer, but promised to work on it.

"I'll have to do a proper examination later," she said, "see if there's any physical symptom."

Jack grinned his best grin. "Proper examination, huh? Do I need my clothes off for that?"

She tried to glare at him, but her lips were twitching. "Playing with fire, Jack Harkness."

He felt a funny shiver when she said his full name, and was reminded that names had power where faeries were concerned. Apparently even if the name was adopted … well, stolen, really. He wondered if that was because there was no one left who knew him by his original name.

When they got back, Jack briefed the team that the Little People were poking around, and that the centre of activity seemed to be Roundstone Wood.

"Oh, I know it," said Owen, perching on a table with a cup of coffee in hand. "Has an odd 'istory."

Jack raised an eyebrow. Knowledge of a wood wasn't something he expected from staunch indoorsman Dr Owen Harper. "What do you mean, 'odd'?"

"It's always stayed wild. In the ancient times it was considered bad luck to walk in there, even collect timber. Even the Romans stayed clear of it."

"They had sense," said Gwen darkly. "The Little People have been entrenched there since a time beyond even the memory of my people, and they don't like trespassers."

"What's the deal, between you and them?" asked Owen. "You don't seem to get on."

"Oh, we get on well enough most of the time," said Gwen. "And by 'get on,' I mean avoid the hell out of each other. About the only thing on Earth that is a serious threat to a faerie is another faerie, so we prefer not to clash. We might play together sometimes, but by and large we keep off each other's turf."

"That's why the rose petal disturbed you so much," said Suzie. "They'd come onto your turf."

Gwen cocked her head with a kind of diagonal shrug. "Well, I hadn't actually marked it as mine yet. The signs I'd left basically said, 'I spend a lot of time here, tread carefully,' but not, 'This place is mine, keep out.'"

"And that's what you changed this morning," said Tosh slowly.

Gwen's lips quirked. "I laid claim. Now the only faeries who'll consider they have the right to just come swanning in here are my immediate kith and kin."

"What exactly is kith?" asked Owen. "I mean, I know I've heard the word, but…"

"Kith are like your friends and neighbours, aren't they?" said Tosh, looking at Gwen, who nodded.

"Mm. But to faeries, it mainly means people you care about as much as kin, but aren't related to. We don't have big extended families like mortals do — or used to, anyway — so our clans are actually our kith rather than kin." She waved a hand, as if sweeping the subject away. "Enough about that. We have more immediate problems." She pointed an accusing finger at the screen showing Estelle's photo.

"I've had no report of any sighting," said Tosh.

"You won't," said Jack. "You should know by now — faeries come in under the radar." He cocked a look at Gwen, who grinned unrepentantly. "But they play tricks with the weather, so set up a program for unnatural weather patterns."

Gwen's eyebrows went up. "Good idea. If anything will pick up the Little People, that will."

"What are we going to do if we detect them?" asked Suzie.

Gwen shrugged. "Pick up the mess they leave behind? If we can stop them hurting innocents, we will, but I'll be honest with you: I do _not_ want to tangle with them."

A pause, and then Owen said, "I feel like anything _you_ don't want to tangle with, the rest of us should probably avoid like it's a radioactive plague victim waving a machine gun."

Gwen considered that. "Fair," she said.

"Hell," said Owen.

***

Once the others had gone home, Gwen kept her promise of an examination. Jack was disappointed to learn that all that was required was a hand down his shirt to rest over his heart.

"Ooh." He twitched and grinned as her hand slid into place. "You're so cold, you'll give me shivers!"

"Shush, I need to concentrate," she muttered. Her eyes unfocused and ceased to see. A funny tingling started under the hand and travelled slowly through Jack's body.

Since he had no other indication of what she might be seeing, Jack watched Gwen's face. A furrow appeared between her brows. She shut her eyes and frowned.

"Find something?" asked Jack.

"You remember the Resurrection Gauntlet, and the way it drew energy off Suzie?" asked Gwen.

Jack frowned. "Yeah."

"Think of that energy as life energy. It's more complicated than that, but go with it. Most people have a pretty finite amount of it, but _you_ …" She opened her eyes to look at him. "You've got heaps of the stuff — absurd amounts. Every single one of your cells has an almost infinite ability to replicate and regenerate — and I'm only saying 'almost' because I don't believe anything is truly infinite."

She took her hand back and stared at him like he was this amazing thing. "Faeries do something similar, except we get our energy from our environment — draw it in and repurpose it. 'S why I feel cold sometimes, especially when I'm hurt or angry; I'm absorbing heat and so forth. But you … it's like you've got this great bottomless well of it, just feeding you all the time. I've never seen anything like it."

Jack nodded. That fit, and it filled in the picture a bit. "So I'm stuck like this?"

Gwen bit her lip. "Depends. The well _looks_ bottomless, but like I say, things are never really infinite — got to run out eventually. And it might be possible to cut off your connection to it, I don't know. But I'm afraid I certainly don't know how to go about it."

Jack sighed. "I kinda figured. Still, thanks. It's good to have a better idea of what's going on."

"I'll let you know if I think of anything," said Gwen. "And I'll ask some of my elders, see if they have any ideas."

Jack nodded to her, re-buttoning his shirt. "I appreciate that."

Gwen popped to her feet, eyes sparking. "In the meantime, I have a territory to defend."

"Hey, make sure you get some sleep," Jack called after her, since he knew that, whatever Gwen might occasionally claim when she didn't want to be nagged, sleep was a thing faeries needed. "I don't want you dozing off while we're dealing with the pixies."

Walking away from him, Gwen waved a flippant hand without looking back. "Don't worry."

…Which wasn't _at all_ an assurance that she would actually sleep. Jack rolled his eyes and gave a deep sigh of defeat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen sat on the counter, eyes lit up so she could see what she was doing — because apparently _turning on the light_ hadn't occurred to her. She had a marker in her mouth and was using a roll of sticky tape to attach a piece of paper to a window. She looked over and saw Suzie.
> 
> "Oh, uh, hi," she said around the marker.
> 
> Suzie went into the kitchen and planted her hands on her hips. "How did you get in here?" she asked, vacillating between being annoyed and amused. She settled on amused.
> 
> Gwen jabbed a thumb at the window over the sink. "Wuvven't wocked," she said past the pen.
> 
> "We're _four storeys up,"_ said Suzie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was editing this to post it, I found myself thinking, "Huh, this really isn't terrible -- maybe I wasn't such a bad writer four years ago." Still, if I wrote this story again now, I would do it a bit differently ... partly just because I've spent a lot of time in old folklore over the past four years, and my understanding of faeries has deepened a lot. There are some fascinating themes of them being neither dead nor alive that would be super interesting to delve into. But I'll save that for the future. : )

That night, Gwen wore a comm and was careful not to kill it. So when she went to check on her teammates in their homes, she _walked_ and used _actual doors_.

It was kind of weirdly nostalgic, actually.

She saw no sign of the Little People. The night was quiet. But when morning broke, with it came a call from the police. They'd had a death in their holding cells overnight, and it was, in the words of the desk sergeant on the phone, "bloody weird." And the details sounded seriously Little People to Gwen.

Jack called in the team. The girls all arrived promptly, but Owen, suffering a killer hangover, swore at Jack over the phone and didn't show up before they left. Ianto stayed to monitor the weather patterns.

"I thought I'd seen everything in this game until now," the desk sergeant told Gwen and Jack as he took them to the body. Tosh and Suzie were off dealing with the mundane side of the mess, CCTV and witnesses, etc. "I mean, we had him locked up, for Christ's sake, on his own." He stopped in front of a door of metal bars. "And he was shouting the odds when he was brought in — said things were following him."

"What kind of things?" asked Jack.

"Well, _shadows_ , he said. And he was going on about being choked." He unlocked the door.

"There were four other prisoners — they saw nothing," said Suzie as she and Tosh came up to join them.

"Where are they now?" asked Gwen.

"Had them transferred," said Tosh.

"CCTV?" asked Jack.

"I'm dealing with that," said Tosh.

The desk sergeant led them down the next corridor. "I thought he was drunk or a nutcase, or both," he said.

"Right, I want this place locked off," said Jack as they arrived at the door of the cell. The desk sergeant hauled it open.

A man lay on his back on the floor, mouth dangling open, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Suzie and Tosh entered the cell and examined it.

"Name?" asked Jack, keeping back in the doorway. Gwen sensed his unease with this situation and remembered that he'd seen men killed by the Little People before. And it had been traumatic.

"Mark Goodman," said Tosh. "Lived in town. Business consultant."

"Cause of death?"

Suzie backed up to allow Tosh better access to the body. When Owen wasn't around, Tosh was their next best medical expert, and this wouldn't be the first time she'd filled in for him.

"Going by the pinpoint hemorrhages on the eyelids and around the hairline, I'd say oxygen deficiency." She peered closer. "But it's odd. There's no fingertip bruising on the face, no areas of pallor."

"Nothing to suggest that pressure was applied," concluded Suzie.

"No," agreed Tosh.

Suzie crouched for a better look. "Yet somehow he suffocated alone in a locked cell."

"Looks like it," said Tosh.

"Gwen, any thoughts?" asked Jack. He looked at her, and Gwen felt that he already knew what had happened and just wanted her to confirm. She was pretty sure she knew, too, but best to make sure.

She crouched over the man, sniffed the air, and pressed her fingertips to his chest. Examining the dead this way was much harder than examining the living, since there wasn't a living system to tap into and their bodies were already breaking down, but it gave her some idea. Sure enough, the lungs and airways felt totally clogged. She peered into the mouth, then grabbed a pair of tweezers from Tosh's equipment to reach inside. She retrieved a red petal.

"Suffocated by rose petals," she reported. "I can smell them. Classic. His lungs and airways are stuffed full." She stood and slipped past Jack to the desk sergeant, who was still hanging around in the corridor. "When he was brought in, did he say anything about children?"

"He did, as it happens. Creepy stuff about little girls. Set my paedophilia senses jangling."

"Right," said Gwen, looking into the middle distance. She touched the man's shoulder. "Thanks."

Recognising the dismissal, he left, despite his curiosity. Oh well, he told himself, it was probably better he didn't know.

"Why did you ask about children?" asked Suzie once he was gone.

Gwen and Jack exchanged a look. "Not here," said Gwen.

***

The team gathered in the conference room again for another briefing.

"The dead man was a convicted paedophile," Jack was saying as Gwen joined them. "He used to hang around schools."

"So what's the deal with children, then?" asked Suzie.

Jack looked at Gwen and stepped aside, ceding the floor to her. She sighed and crossed her arms. "The thing you need to understand about faeries is that we aren't very good at reproducing the usual way. My people _can_ , though it's rare, but the Little People can only make more Little People by stealing humans and transforming them."

"They steal children," Tosh realised with horror. "Like in the old stories."

"My gran always warned me against faeries," said Ianto softly. "Was always doing superstitious things to ward them off. I never took her seriously."

"She was wise," said Gwen, staring at him through her eyelashes. "They'd have liked you, Ianto Jones. You could have been a Chosen One." She cocked her head and spoke in an eerie, whispery voice,

" _Come away, o human child_

_To the waters and the wild,_

_With a faerie hand in hand,_

_For the world's more full of weeping_

_Than you can understand."_

They all shivered, and Ianto swallowed hard.

"What's a Chosen One?" asked Suzie.

"A mortal selected by faeries to become one of them," said Gwen. "Someone who doesn't fit into the human world, who's never quite comfortable or happy in it. Someone who longs for something more. And with the Little People, it's nearly always a child."

No one said anything for a few long moments. A few glances were tossed Ianto's way, and he shifted uncomfortably.

"So this Mark Goodman — and now there's an ironic name," said Owen, "he went after a Chosen One?"

"Likely," said Gwen, leaning her hip against the table. "No faerie tolerates an attempt to harm a Chosen One. We protect our own."

"But why the rose petals?" asked Tosh.

Gwen shrugged. "Fun. Irony. Tormenting and killing him with something pretty and harmless — funny, in the eyes of the Little People."

Jack crossed his arms. "So somewhere around here is a child — probably a girl, since that was what Goodman went for — and the Little People are going to take her." He looked Gwen in the eye. "Is there anything we can do to stop them?"

Gwen fixed him with a hard stare. "Against the Little People? They control the elements in a way even I don't. Fire — water — the air that we breathe … they can drag that air right out of your bodies, or set it on fire. You can't stop them, you can't fight them, and if you try, they might not only kill you, but also go on a spree of collateral damage just to spite you."

She straightened to face Jack head-on. "And besides all that, why would you _want_ to stop them? They've chosen this child because she doesn't fit here, because she isn't happy and wants to get away. Because she'll go with them if they ask."

"What about the child's parents?" asked Jack tightly. "Are we just going to let them go through the hell of losing her?"

"Will it be any better when she commits suicide as a teenager because she couldn't take any more of trying to live in a world where she doesn't belong?" Gwen shot back. "That's what happened the last time anyone stopped the Little People taking a Chosen One. That and a house fire, two floods, and thoroughly unlikely lethal lightning strike."

Jack sighed and bent over the table, leaning on it with both hands. "Isn't there anything you can do?" he asked Gwen.

She raised an eyebrow. "To do something that would seriously hack off a bunch of the only creatures around who could really kill me? And potentially cause a breakdown of relations between the Little People and the People of Peace that would get me into serious trouble with _both_ groups?" She sighed at the look on Jack's face. "Look, I'm sorry, I really am. But I can't solve this problem. All we can do is try to prevent collateral damage."

Jack turned away and ran both hands through his hair, teeth clenched. Tense silence reigned for a few long moments before he sighed, nodded, and turned back. "Okay. If that's all we can do, we'll do it. But I reserve the right not to like it." He planted his fists on the table. "We need to find this child."

***

A lead was dumped into their laps the next day: a burst of unusual weather centred over a school.

"Shit," spat Gwen when she saw it, and she was off before the rest of them could even get to the lift.

Her comm — Tosh's latest design — held up through her headlong sprint across the rooftops of Cardiff, so she was able to update the team on the situation while they were still on their way. (Tosh wished she could actually see Gwen in action when she did things like this, leaping from building to building and probably darting straight through traffic. It must look straight out of an action film, only better. Because it was real.)

"No one's hurt," she told them, "but they're badly shaken up. The children were all at recess when they were hit by an extremely localised gale. Some branches were blown down, and a bunch of people blown over, but that's the extent of the damages. The school is calling parents to send all the kids home. You want me to start interviews?"

"Please," said Jack. "We'll be there in two minutes."

When they got there, they found Gwen talking to one of the schoolteachers, a young woman wrapped in a plaid blanket, who had witnessed the whole thing.

"Two children were almost scared to death, but they're okay," the teacher was saying. "And there was little Jasmine in amongst it all. She hadn't been touched. The sun was shining down on her." She shook her head and looked up at them, something disbelieving in her expression. "It was … it was like an aura, like something protecting her…"

Gwen leaned closer. "Who is Jasmine?" she asked with her best you-can-trust-me-I'm-here-to-help face on. She was way too good at that face, Jack thought, and the tone to go with it.

"Jasmine Pierce — she's a pupil of mine."

Jack resisted the urge to break in, since Gwen was doing fine and had won this woman's trust — remarkably quickly. He couldn't help wondering whether there was any hocus-pocus going on or whether it was just hundreds of years of experience dealing with people.

"And where is she now?" asked Gwen.

"We're sending all the children home — we have to."

Gwen sat back, and Jack saw the certainty in her eyes. "Right. Thank you."

She left the teacher and came over to the rest of them. Tosh was already running a search on Jasmine Pierce on her tablet.

"We've got her?" Jack asked quietly.

"Oh yeah," said Gwen.

"So what do we do?" asked Owen.

Gwen chewed her lip. "Not sure. What happened here today was a warning — they _didn't_ actually hurt anybody. My guess would be that those two who were nearly scared to death were bullying Jasmine. And presumably now they'll never go near her again. But still. I don't like the pixies messing about in a school. You can never tell where they're going to draw the line."

She dug her fingers into her hair and turned away. "What we really want is for them to just _hurry up_ and _take_ her. Then we don't have to worry about them killing anybody to protect her…"

"Got her address," said Tosh. She looked up from her tablet. "Should we go there?"

"Better not," said Gwen after a moment. "I guarantee they're watching us. Better not to go near a Chosen One." She sighed. "Let's just go home while I figure out how to tell them that if they're to take the kid, just _take_ her already and stop making trouble on my turf."

"But what if they attack again?" demanded Owen.

"They won't," said Gwen, "not unless someone tries to harm Jasmine. And Adam Goodman aside, not many people are inclined to harm little girls. And if they are…" she shrugged, face going cold, "I say live and let die."

***

They spent the rest of the afternoon gathering background on Jasmine Pierce and her family. Tosh also dug into superstitions about how to ward off faeries and compiled a list to run past Gwen when she came back from lurking, or whatever she had vanished off to do.

"Pretty sure most of this is rubbish," said Jack, looking the list over, "but it'd be good to know if there's anything here that actually works."

Tosh went home first that night, suffering a headache she blamed on too much staring at computer screens. She'd only been gone about fifteen minutes when she called Jack in something close to a panic, saying her house had been broken into and torn apart.

No one else had gone home yet. Jack had them all — including Ianto and Gwen, who had just walked in — together and heading for Tosh's place in two minutes.

She was waiting for them on her front stoop, tearful and holding an umbrella as an improvised weapon. Jack wondered if he ought to send his staff home armed.

"They smashed my computer," she told them as Gwen checked her over for any sign of injury.

"Smashed it?" said Owen. "They didn't steal it?"

"Oh, we aren't dealing with humans here," said Jack from inside the house, glaring at the mess. Flowers and leaves lay everywhere, amongst shattered glass and electronics. The smell of roses was overpowering. The others all filed in behind Jack. Gwen made an angry hissing sound between her teeth. The air went cold, their breath misting before them, and a glance at Gwen proved that her eyes were glowing.

"If you're going to have a temper tantrum, could you do it outside?" said Jack. "I don't wanna get my skin frozen off."

Gwen paid him no attention. "The little _bastards_ ," she snarled.

"What is this?" Suzie asked her, picking her way around an upturned coffee table. "Another warning?"

"Yeah," said Gwen, glaring fit to burn a hole in something. "We're getting too close. Interfering has consequences."

They all looked around at the mess — every piece of furniture turned over, most breakable things broken, and Tosh's computer looking like someone had taken a hatchet to it.

"What do we do?" asked Tosh in a quavering voice.

Gwen took a deep breath and visibly tamped down her anger. "We tidy up. They've given their warning; they won't do anything else unless we ignore it." She rubbed a hand across the back of Tosh's neck. "Come on."

They all stayed to help. Jack and Owen righted furniture, Suzie swept, Gwen collected all the flowers, and Ianto proved himself invaluable by going through everything and sorting what could be fixed from what would have to be replaced. He then made lists of each and offered to go out and buy anything Tosh felt she needed that night. Tosh, clutching the hard-drive she'd managed to salvage from her beloved computer, promptly broke down, hugged him, and sniffled into his shoulder. The startled look on his face was precious, but the others all bit their tongues to keep from laughing.

Then Ianto left to get Tosh a new microwave and toaster — the computer and television Tosh said she would need to choose for herself — and Gwen went outside to cover Tosh's house with the same sort of markings she had put on Estelle's.

"Do you want one of us to stay with you?" Suzie asked Tosh.

Tosh hesitated. "Well … if you wouldn't mind…" She looked horribly embarrassed to ask.

Suzie gave her a wry smile and said in an undertone, "To tell you the truth, I'm not all that keen on spending the night on my own, either. Even Gwen is spooked."

So the two of them agreed that Suzie would spend the night on Tosh's sofa. Suzie went home to pick up pyjamas and a toothbrush — and also to check that her flat hadn't been turned over — and stopped dead at the sight of her front door.

A big poster of a black tree had been affixed to it. Ogham runes ran along the poster's edges. As she got closer, she saw Ogham runes on the doorjamb as well, drawn on the corners in what looked like permanent marker.

Suzie stared. Could Gwen possibly have got here from Tosh's in enough time to do this? She unlocked the door with her heart pounding.

Her flat was dark, but she could hear movement from the kitchen. Nothing in the entry or sitting room had been disturbed. Suzie edged forward until she could see into the kitchen.

Gwen sat on the counter, eyes lit up so she could see what she was doing — because apparently _turning on the light_ hadn't occurred to her. She had a marker in her mouth and was using a roll of sticky tape to attach a piece of paper to a window. She looked over and saw Suzie.

"Oh, uh, hi," she said around the marker.

Suzie went into the kitchen and planted her hands on her hips. "How did you get in here?" she asked, vacillating between being annoyed and amused. She settled on amused.

Gwen jabbed a thumb at the window over the sink. "Wuvven't wocked," she said past the pen.

"We're _four storeys up_ ," said Suzie. She groaned. "I should know better by now. I've known you long enough."

Gwen grinned around the marker, then took it out of her mouth and started drawing squeakily on the window. Suzie watched her for a minute.

"So I take it these are more 'Keep out or else' signs?" said Suzie.

"Yup. Bit temporary, but they'll do until I can put up something more permanent."

"Good," said Suzie with a relieved sigh. "I appreciate it." She started to turn away. "I'm just going to collect a few things and head out again. I'm spending the night at Tosh's — she's pretty shaken up."

Gwen favoured Suzie with a brilliant, approving smile. "Good. I'm glad she won't be on her own. Thank you for doing that."

Suzie shrugged awkwardly. "Well, truth be told, I don't really want to be on my own either." Somehow, admitting that to Gwen wasn't embarrassing like admitting it to anyone else would have been. She'd only told Tosh because Tosh was so clearly feeling the same.

"Of course not," said Gwen. "They're deliberately rubbing your vulnerability in your faces. Closing ranks is only sensible."

And that right there was what Suzie loved about Gwen: if your fear was silly, she'd chase it away; and if your fear was reasonable, she'd praise it as common sense — she made you stop feeling like a coward and instead feel like you were being prudent.

Gwen wrote on all the rest of Suzie's windows while Suzie collected her things, then they locked everything up and left together.

"Right," said Gwen, "Ianto's place next, then Owen's. See you tomorrow!"

"Try not to give either of them heart-attacks!" Suzie called after her.

"Would I do a thing like that?" said Gwen, wide-eyed.

Suzie snorted. "Yes."

***

Gwen had no trouble at Ianto's place. He wasn't home yet, and he had windows she could open by inserting a metal ruler through the weather stripping and fiddling the latch. Like Suzie, he was on a high enough floor that such a weakness wouldn't usually matter.

Gwen marked all windows and outer doors with the Blackhazel symbol and warnings against trespassers. She debated leaving Ianto a note to explain, but decided not to bother. Chances were he'd see Suzie at Tosh's place and she'd tell him to expect it. And even if she didn't, he'd been translating Gwen's runes from the beginning; he'd figure out what they meant. So she headed on to Owen's.

Owen, too, was on an upper floor, but his was a newer building with more sophisticated windows. Since she didn't fancy trying to fiddle it open by magic while clinging to not very much of anything five storeys up, she instead rapped on the glass.

Owen's face appeared around a corner, pale and tense. Then he recognised her, rolled his eyes, and set down the lamp he'd caught up as an improvised weapon. He came to the window and opened it.

"Really?" he said as she climbed in. "Really? You couldn't use the front door?"

"Where's the fun in that? Besides, I've done it to everyone else; seemed a shame to leave you out. You'll be pleased to know that your windows are the hardest to get through of anybody in Torchwood."

"Wonderful," said Owen dryly. "Why are you 'ere? I thought you'd be keeping an eye on Tosh."

"Suzie's with her. Which frees me up to go door to door! Well." She cocked her head. "Window to window. Do you mind if I draw pictures and runes on all possible entries to your flat?"

Owen crossed his arms. "Do these pictures and runes amount to a big sign saying, 'Piss off, faeries'?"

She grinned. "That's the general gist, yeah."

"Then be my guest. I don't want that lot coming 'round; they make terrible 'ouseguests. Just don't do anything that'll get me in trouble with the manager." He headed for the kitchen. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

Gwen accepted a beer, which was all Owen had besides whisky, and set to work. Owen watched her for a while, then said,

"You know, I still can't figure you out. Why'd you join Torchwood? It's not like you needed a job, or even knew what to do with one."

Gwen paused and looked over at him. "If you can't work out my motives, you're trying to make them more complicated than they really are." She pointed at him. "You, Owen Harper, are a complex man with complex motivations, and because of that you expect others to be complex too. But I'm really quite simple."

Owen frowned at her, and Gwen could just about hear him thinking, _'That really doesn't answer my question.'_ Or maybe it was, _'Simple my arse.'_ "Why, then?"

She shrugged. "I needed something to do … and I was lonely." The latter far more than the former, truth be told. She'd been wandering for a long time.

Owen digested that for a few seconds. "But if you're so 'given to wander,' as you say, why tie yourself down? It's obvious you can barely stand to stay put, especially in a city."

Gwen turned away from the window she was marking and sat on the back of the sofa she'd been standing on. "We tend to wander, yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't stay put — well, relatively put. I've wandered a hell of a lot more than the average faerie in my life. But just because I'm not used to hanging around … doesn't mean I don't want to." She smiled softly. "I was ready to come home."

"So you're sticking around?"

Gwen tilted her head. Was that what all this was about — that he was afraid she might disappear? She smiled at him. "That's the plan. I never like to commit to things absolutely, because one never knows when aliens might go and invade Australia. But barring world-ending disasters, yes. I'm sticking around."

Owen mumbled "Good," into his beer, and then got all embarrassed at having accidentally let on that he gave a damn and went off to turn on the television. Gwen chuckled to herself and went back to her work.

***

Tosh spent the morning shopping with Ianto for a new computer. She could live without a television for a while, but a computer was necessary. She carried the salvaged hard-drive safely tucked away in her purse, clutched under her arm as if she were afraid to let it out of her sight. Which she was, a bit. Her sanctuary had been invaded, her possessions desecrated. Her house didn't feel safe anymore, though Gwen's efforts and Suzie's presence had helped.

_Well,_ thought Tosh as she looked at a sleek, powerful model that she'd been lusting after for months. _At least here's one silver lining._

By the time she and Ianto got back to the Hub, it was early afternoon. Gwen was nowhere to be seen, and the rest of the team was keeping an eye on local weather patterns and discussing Gwen's protective symbols and whether they should ask her to put them anywhere else. Ianto was immediately waved over to help with translating Welsh. Tosh followed. She was fascinated by languages and thinking more and more that learning Welsh might be a good investment. She wondered if Ianto would be willing to teach her what he knew.

Before she could ask, their discussion was cut short by a shadow dropping from above and flitting through the air to land in the middle of the Hub. All five of them shot up as if they'd been electrocuted and went for weapons.

"For the love of Mother Nature, you lot, it's only me."

There was a sheepish silence as Gwen watched them all with laughing eyes. It wasn't even an unusual way for her to make an entrance, and they'd all had three months to get used to her.

"Yes, well," said Tosh, straightening with as much dignity as she could muster. "I think you could forgive us for being a little on edge today."

Gwen sobered. "Yes." She drew herself up, her expression steely. "I've decided what I'm going to do. It's risky, but I can't let last night pass."

"What are you planning?" asked Jack, frowning at her.

Gwen squared her shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. "I can't stop them taking her. But I can tell them to hurry up. To just take her now and stop making trouble in my territory. To end this before anyone else dies."

Jack moved to stand right in front of her and crossed his arms. "When you say 'risky'…"

"They won't take kindly to my interference," she said flatly. " _But_ they've been causing trouble on my turf, and that gives me the right to be annoyed, and to make my annoyance felt. I'm betting they won't want the trouble of a territorial dispute, especially since it might easily turn into conflict with all of the Blackhazels."

"But how are you gonna find 'em to tell 'em that?" asked Owen. "Even you can't track 'em."

"Easy. I'm gonna go to Jasmine's house."

Jack breathed in sharply, eyes going intense. "They might see that as a threat to her."

Gwen nodded. "Which is why I've got to play this very carefully."

"We're coming with you," Jack informed her in a tone that said any attempt at argument would be bashed over the head with a sledgehammer.

Gwen cocked an incredulous look at him. "Now that they really will see as a threat."

"We'll keep our distance," said Jack. "But we'll be right there just in case." He stepped closer to Gwen and stared down into her eyes. "I know you're used to being on your own, but you're part of a team now, and this is what a team does. We work together and watch each other's backs."

Gwen stared back for a moment, then looked away with a sigh. "Oh, all right then. But if you let any of them get killed, I am going to turn you into a badger."

Jack's eyebrows shot up. "Uh. Yeah. Absolutely am not planning to let anybody get killed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go -- I should have time to edit it and get it up next weekend!


	3. The Power of Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Tosh would like out of her day is not to get caught in the middle of a deadly faerie grudge match, please and thank you.
> 
> But of course disaster and Torchwood are constant companions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, last chapter of this one! I have two more complete stories sitting on my hard drive, so I'll continue editing those and posting them over the coming weeks.

Tosh sat in the SUV, watching with the others as Gwen hopped out of the passenger seat and headed up the street to Jasmine Pierce's house, hands stuffed in her pockets. The place was crowded with cars; Jasmine's family appeared to be having a party, because of course they were. Wonderful. Sod's Law. Tosh really, really hoped this didn't blow up.

Jack was in the driver's seat, and Owen and Suzie were in the back with Tosh. Jack had given Ianto the option of coming, but he'd elected to stay, saying there weren't enough seats in the SUV. Tosh, though, suspected it wasn't just that. They'd talked that morning while shopping and setting up her new computer, and she was pretty sure that Gwen's comments about how the Little People would have liked him had seriously unnerved Ianto.

Maybe he was afraid they'd try to take him. Or maybe he was just afraid of having it proven that he didn't fit in this world … that he was somehow a bit other. That he might be doomed to be unhappy here. Discovering that would certainly upset Tosh. In his shoes, she thought she might avoid it too. It was kind of like checking your DNA for deadly genetic diseases. Did you really want to know?

And there really was something just a bit fey about Ianto … the way he came and went without your noticing … the way he popped up at your elbow just as you realised you needed him … the way he was almost preternaturally unfazed by whatever they threw at him … well, most of the time. The Cybermen had thrown him for six. But even then… Maybe—

Tosh's thoughts were cut off by a distant scream.

"What's that?" demanded Owen.

Suzie groaned and dropped her head back against the seat. "Here we go." 

Jack's hand flew to his comm. "Gwen, talk to me."

"They're attacking a man," Gwen's tense voice came in their ears. "They haven't even noticed me yet. Get over here — get all the other people out!"

They were scrambling out of the SUV and running up the street before she'd even finished her sentence. People were pouring out of the back garden of the Pierce house, screaming and stumbling. Jack took charge at once, shouting orders and directions. The civilians turned to his guidance at once, relieved to have instructions. Tosh and the others followed in his wake, helping people to their feet and chivying them away from the danger.

Tosh pulled a middle-aged woman to her feet and set her in the right direction with a push. Then she turned and saw the back garden.

Six of them, and they could only be the Little People. They were more or less human-shaped, but their skin was a dull green they had shiny, iridescent dragonfly wings. Their limbs were like oak branches and their hair like moss. Both their ears and teeth were long and pointed, and their eyes … their eyes reminded Tosh of Gwen on a particularly wild day, but harder, crueller.

One of them flew at a man and threw him down on his back. He tried to fight, but it landed on him and shoved its hand down his throat. The man jerked and writhed, and Tosh realised it was killing him. Her instinct was to attack — the creature was smaller than her, she could throw it off — but she held herself back. It would kill her. She knew it would kill her. And her effort wouldn't save the man.

And then Gwen was there, in the middle of the garden, sparking all over with anger. The Little People all paused, turning their attention to her. With a voice like thunder, she shouted to the sky,

_"Tha mise 'gur cur fo gheasaibh,_

 _Agus fo chroisibh_ ,

_'S fo naoidh cuingibh màthraichean_

_Sìthein, siùbhlain, seachrain,_

_'S an t-uan a's meataiche is a's mì-theòraiche ~~  
~~_

_A thoirt dhibh ur cinn, agus ur cluasan,_

_Agus ur cumhachd,_

_Mura fàg sibh na tha leamsa,_

_Agus mo ranntair_

_Is mura till sibh do ur tìr fhéin_

_Gus an tig Neach Taghta a-seo a-rithist."_

Everything stopped. Gwen's words rang through the silence. At first Tosh thought it was Welsh, but it lacked the proliferation of TH sounds. Whatever language it was, it throbbed with power.

"Take with you what's yours," Gwen added in English. "I've no wish to stop you. But stop making trouble on my turf."

The faerie nearest her fluttered into the air and landed right in front of her, staring her in the face. It was a foot and a half shorter than her, but she leaned back, face pale. Tosh felt cold as she realised that despite all her bravado and power, Gwen was afraid.

The two stared each other down. Out of the corner of her eye, Tosh saw Jack and Suzie grab a blonde woman to stop her trying to get to her dead lover, or the little girl who stood watching impassively at the bottom of the garden.

 _"We have trespassed against you,"_ said the faerie in an eerie, whispery voice like a dozen children rolled into one.

"Yes," said Gwen.

 _"That one,"_ said the faerie, pointing a long, branch-like arm at Tosh, who tensed. _"She is your Chosen One?"_

Gwen's eyes darted to her. "She's my Protected," she corrected tightly. "They're _all_ my Protected. And I am angry."

 _"You should have marked them,"_ it told her, chiding, almost mocking.

Gwen's reply was soft and did not carry, but Tosh just barely caught it. "I did not realise that they were mine until they were threatened." Then, louder, "I've put out proper warnings now. You will not touch them."

 _"We will not,"_ agreed the faerie. Its face went dark, baring far too many of its sharp teeth. _"And **you** will not touch **ours**."_

"I will not," said Gwen. "Though I wish you would have some pity on the poor mother. You are taking everything from her."

The faeries laughed — eerie, childish laughter.

"Jasmine!" the blonde woman cried — Lynn, that was her name — cried to the child, perhaps sensing what was happening. "Jasmine, come here!"

"No," said the child. "I'm going away — with my friends. I'll be happy there."

"No, no!" wailed Lynn, fighting Jack and Suzie now. "Come back! Come back to me!"

 _"She was never yours,"_ the faerie told her. _"Ours, always ours. Come away, o human child, to the waters and the wild, with a faerie hand in hand…"_ It offered its twiggy hand to Jasmine, and she skipped up and took it, grinning up at the faerie. _"…For the world's more full up weeping than you can understand."_

Lynn wailed and screamed, writhing against her captors. Watching it made Tosh feel like her heart was being ripped out. The faerie pointed at Lynn, and she stopped suddenly, a stunned look on her face, like she'd been struck. Then she collapsed. Jack caught and cradled her.

"What did you do?" he demanded furiously.

 _"She will not remember,"_ said the faerie. _"And she will have another child."_ It looked at the dead man, then canted a sly look at Gwen. _"You will bring him back?"_

"I was intending to try," she admitted.

 _"You will succeed. It is soon enough."_ It paused, considering. _"We will see if he treats his own child better. If not…"_ It grinned the grin of a great white shark.

"I won't stop you," said Gwen.

The Little People only laughed, capricious and uncaring. They began to vanish, and the one with Jasmine turned to go. The little girl took one last look at her mother, then looked up at Gwen. _"Thank you,"_ she said in the eerie voice of the Little People.

Gwen smiled. "May the wind lift your wings, little one."

Jasmine laughed with delight and skipped away through a hole in the fence that had rotted away in the minutes they'd been talking. The team stood silently and watched her fade into a flutter of wings and faerie lights. She was gone.

Gwen shot to the side of the fallen man — Roy, if Tosh remembered rightly. They all ran to join her, Jack leaving Lynn laid carefully on the ground.

"You can bring him back?" said Owen.

"Resuscitate him, yeah," she said, probing Roy's throat. "He's only been gone a few minutes, and you've got a good-sized window with suffocation, if you can only clear the airway." The rose petals spilling out of Roy's mouth lit up and burned away in a flash of sparkling blue fire, too quickly to burn flesh. "Ooh, lot of fluid too," murmured Gwen. A gout of steam poured from his nose and mouth.

"Aren't you scalding him?" asked Owen.

"Nah. I've got more control than that." The steam trailed away. "Right. Let's do this." She rubbed her hands together like she was trying to warm them, and sparks began to fly from her fingers. Her flesh became luminescent. Then she pressed her glowing hands against Roy's chest, as if to perform CPR, and gave him one sharp compression.

The energy in her hands grounded instantly into his chest, and he jerked. Roy took a ragged breath. Then another. He was alive.

"He might 'ave brain damage," Owen warned. "He was deprived of oxygen for a good five minutes."

"Maybe a little," said Gwen. "But not much. People have been resuscitated after a lot longer than that. But I'll give his brain cells a little shot of energy to help with regeneration." She rubbed her hands together again, building up their glow, and then laid them on Roy's head. "Might still have a little memory loss. And I'll be surprised if he remembers Jasmine." She shot a meaningful look at the mother. "But he'll be fine, so long as he doesn't piss off any more faeries."

"What was that you said to them?" asked Tosh. "It sounded like a spell."

"It was, of a sort," said Gwen. "It's a sort of curse to force someone to do something or not do something. In Welsh we call it a _tynged…_ Though properly this one was a _guess_ — that's the Scottish Gaelic term for it, nothing to do with the English word 'guess.' I got that one from a Scottish friend of mine; she's particularly good with a _tynged_."

"It worked," said Tosh, amazed at what Gwen had done with just words. "You stopped them, just like that."

Gwen shrugged. "Words have power. They've always been one of the best weapons against faeries. But they work much better against an individual. Going after all of them at once like that was a big risk." She grimaced. "Could have backfired."

"But you got them to show mercy," said Jack softly, perhaps just a hint of wonder in his voice.

Gwen glanced up at him, eyes dark. "They were in the mood. Don't count on it working twice."

"Never," he assured her with a wry half-smile. "It's bad enough trying the same trick twice with _you._ " He stood with a groan, scrubbing a hand through his hair and surveying the mess. "Well team, time to start coming up with a cover story and chasing down panicky guests with Retcon. Everyone's favourite part."

"Joy," said Suzie, the word as flat as if it had been run over by a steamroller.

***

Ianto climbed up the stairs and catwalks to the upper reaches of the Hub. Somewhere high above, a soft, echoing voice was singing in Welsh. The song was pretty … but unearthly. It gave him chills, even though he knew it was only Gwen.

He found her perched on the edge of the highest catwalk. He thought about joining her, then decided that sheer drops were all very well for people who could fly and instead sat in the middle of the catwalk. Gwen looked over at him and gave him a half-smile that lacked its usual spark.

Really. As if the sad song echoing down from above hadn't been clear enough.

"Doing a spot of brooding, are we?" he asked mildly.

Gwen snorted and reached out to give his shoulder a shove. "I watched a woman scream and cry as her lover was killed and her child abandoned her. I think I'm entitled."

"But you brought him back, didn't you?" Ianto pointed out gently. "And neither of them even remember the child."

"They do on some level. Nothing is ever truly forgotten, not really. It'll be a nightmare they can't remember … a hurt they can't explain. And it … got me thinking. About the morality of stealing people, even if they want to go."

She didn't look at him, but Ianto suddenly realised what this was about. "You're thinking about me, aren't you?"

She just looked at him, and Ianto saw it in the darkness in her eyes.

"I don't have any parents to miss me," he told her gently. "And my sister doesn't see much of me anyway."

"Don't try to tell me it wouldn't hurt her," said Gwen sharply. "There's still a bond between you. I see it when you speak of her, and your niece and nephew. They love you."

Ianto's throat closed, and he bowed his head. He didn't know how Gwen could be so sure, having never met Rhiannon or her children, but … he certainly liked to think — like to _wish_ that they loved him. Even though he didn't fit into his sister's family.

Story of his life, that. He'd never fit in, never belonged. Even here at Torchwood Three, he was little more than a teaboy. It was why Gwen's words about children better off stolen had rung so uncomfortably true.

But there had been certain people, down the years, with whom he had felt he belonged. His mother, before she'd died when he was fourteen. His grandfather, dead three days after Ianto's twentieth birthday — he'd left for London after that, with no reason left to stay. And there he'd met Lisa, with whom he'd felt more at home than ever before in his life. Then he'd lost her, too, and thought he might break.

But now things were changing. Being around Gwen now gave him the same sense of calm and safety that his mother and grandfather had given him. And now he was growing closer to Tosh and Jack, letting them see a little past his mask…

Ianto blinked to himself as he realised that he did not want to leave Torchwood.

"Any news of Lisa?" he managed to ask through a tight throat. It had been a month, and Gwen had passed along updates to him whenever she got them.

"All trace of Cyber technology and programming has been removed, so that's one good thing," said Gwen tiredly, rubbing her forehead. "But getting it out did pretty much destroy her mind. Rhys called in a favour from a friend of his who specialises in the brain. They're making progress, but it's a horribly long and complicated job. He said they've got her moving around and rebuilding her physical strength, but higher mental processes are going to be a while yet."

Ianto took a deep, shuddering sigh as he fought back a fresh wave of grief and stuffed it away into the box where he kept it. He was pretty sure that box was going to explode one of these days. "And what about…" He gestured helplessly at Gwen, trying to indicate everything that made her what she was.

Gwen, fortunately, understood what he meant with his flapping hands. "That comes out of the higher processes she doesn't have yet. But Rhys reckons he's seen one or two early signs, as one might expect from a toddler."

Ianto spared a thought for the idea of a faerie toddler, then decided it didn't bear contemplating. Thank god they apparently didn't develop their powers until later.

"So she is turning, then?" he asked quietly.

"Rhys thinks so."

Ianto took a deep, measured breath as his future slotted into place in his mind. "What's to say you'd have to steal me?" Gwen turned a questioning look in him, so he elaborated. "When — if — you turn me, what's to say I'd have to leave?"

Gwen chewed her lip. "People generally want to. The transition is rough — a roller coaster, and you can be a danger to the people around you until you can get it under control. Plus…" She ran her fingers through her hair, grimacing. "Well, it can drive you a bit wild, make you want to get out, get away." Her voice went quiet. "I ran for weeks, hardly stopping to eat and sleep."

"But I wouldn't _have_ to leave?" Ianto pressed.

She cocked her head. "…No, you wouldn't have to. Especially considering…" She waved her hand at the Hub, encompassing it and Torchwood. "Not many safer places to be going through it. We might have to take you away for a while now and then, if you're getting dangerous, but…" She smiled at last, small but genuine. "You wouldn't have to leave Torchwood."

"And I could keep seeing my sister, if I'm careful?" he asked. "I mean, she'd be bound to notice eventually — like after years of not ageing — but…" he trailed off, watching Gwen hopefully.

She huffed a faint laugh at him. "I suppose you could, if you're careful, though we'd have to play that one by ear." She shook her head and smiled. "Trying to keep two lives going, even in a small way, usually ends poorly, but you, Ianto Jones … I think you might find a way to have your cake and eat it, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely made up all the details about Ianto's family. I don't think they contradict anything in canon, but I'm not 100% sure.
> 
> And I would like to apologize to the Welsh-speakers of this world that I couldn't give Gwen a proper Welsh tynged, since I unfortunately don't speak Welsh. I do, however, speak -- and teach -- Scottish Gaelic, so I took a geas out of one of our traditional legends and altered it to suit the situation. A geas (pronounced "guess" in Scottish and "gass" in Irish) is a kind of curse that forces somebody to do something or not to something, with horrible consequences should they try to break it. 
> 
> To save you using Google Translate -- which cannot translate Gaelic to save its _life_ \-- here's a translation:
> 
> I am putting you under spells  
> And under crosses  
> And under the nine bonds of  
> the wandering, travelling faerie mothers  
> That the weakest and most timid lamb  
> Could take from you your heads and your ears  
> And your power  
> If you don't leave what is mine  
> And my territory  
> And return to your own land  
> Until a Chosen One comes here again.
> 
> (Seriously, don't use Google Translate for Gaelic. I ran this through just for fun, and it turned "Chosen One" into "Selectman" and translated the weakest and most timid lamb line as "The lamb is metaphorical and most misanthropic in its own right." I kid you not.)
> 
> ...So, yeah, most of the first two thirds comes straight out of an ancient Fionn MacCumhail legend, but I made up the last five lines to fit. And I changed a few words to make it more comprehensible to modern Gaelic speakers. Which is probably some kind of sacrilege, but meh.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!


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